High-profile Australian QC and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson says the killing of Osama bin Laden is a perversion of justice that has effectively given the terrorist mastermind what he craved.

In the days since bin Laden's death, the US has been forced to backtrack and clarify details of the killing, with a picture now emerging of a targeted assassination.

This morning, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed bin Laden was unarmed when US commandos raided his compound in Pakistan and shot him above his left eye, reportedly blowing away a section of his skull.

Mr Robertson has told ABC News Breakfast bin Laden should have been brought to trial and his death has made him look like a martyr.

"The way to demystify this man is not to kill him and have the iconic picture of his body," he said.

"The way to demystify him, rather than to these soulful pictures of the tall man on the mountain, is to put him on trial, to see him as a hateful and hate-filled old man screaming from the dock or lying in the witness box.

"That way the true inhumanity of the man is exposed."

Mr Robertson says US president Barack Obama has been sloppy with his use of the word "justice" and questions need to be answered about whether there was an explicit order to kill bin Laden.

"It's not justice. It's a perversion of the term. Justice means taking someone to court, finding them guilty upon evidence and sentencing them," he said.

"This man has been subject to summary execution, and what is now appearing after a good deal of disinformation from the White House is it may well have been a cold-blooded assassination."

Mr Robertson says it is an irony that the US has given bin Laden what he craved.

"The last thing he wanted was to be put on trial, to be convicted and to end his life in a prison farm in upstate New York," he said.

"What he wanted was exactly what he got - to be shot in mid-jihad and get a fast track to paradise and the Americans have given him that.

"It's an irony that it's a win-win situation for both Osama and Obama. The latter gets re-elected as president and the former gets his fast track to paradise."

The US is still debating whether to release what it says are "gruesome" photos of bin Laden's corpse.

The White House also has pictures of bin Laden's burial at sea, which it says adhered to Muslim traditions.

But Mr Robertson says there will be consequences of releasing any of the photos.

"The method of disposing his body at night without an autopsy is also questionable," he said.

"They've got a photograph but they're not releasing that for fear that it'll become iconic, rather like the picture of Che Guevara on the slab.

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